Put Cap On Pentagon Waste

April 6, 1985

President Reagan and Senate Republicans agreed Thursday to cut the deficit to $175 billion and increase Pentagon spending by the inflation rate plus 3 percent. That's progress on the deficit, but this numbers game on national defense contradicts common sense.

Every year Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger shoots for the moon, and every year Congress restrains him a bit. Amid their dueling statistics, the one sure thing is that those hundreds of billions will not be spent according to sensible priorities and with businesslike controls on quality and price.

Those basics of good management are the missing ingredients in the defense debate. Without them at the start, the Pentagon cannot come up with a credible, sensible budget. As a result, the chronic lack of priorities and controls threatens national security. It is wasting billions and eroding the consensus for a defense buildup.

This week brought new evidence of that waste. According to Pentagon auditors, Mr. Weinberger's August 1983 order to standardize the purchase of spare parts has been ignored 88 percent of the time.

With such reports of mismanagement never ending, the political wind has shifted a bit. Some Republican senators have proposed cutting Pentagon personnel by about 10 percent. That may be too much, but once again Mr. Weinberger's opposition to any cutbacks leaves congressional realists to act on their own. Another storm signal came this week when the Senate Armed Services Committee cut the administration's 1986 request for MX missiles in half. There flipped a bargaining chip -- or half a bargaining chip -- out the window.

Congress shares the blame for the absurdity of the debate on military spending. Dozens of obsolete military bases are glaring examples -- an estimated $2 billion drain on the Treasury. But senators and congressmen turn into tinhorn demagogues on the value of their home-turf bases, and this conservative administration hasn't had the guts to take them on.

And so it goes. In the name of defending America, billions are wasted indefensibly. Thus there's little consolation in the new magic number of next year's defense, or in the likelihood that the House will shave that 3 percent a bit more. The shameful waste isn't what is being cut from Mr. Weinberger's shopping list. Right now, the waste is built into the Pentagon's whole way of operating, and operators on Capitol Hill are accomplices in it.